Traitor and the Hero

In the text, the initial crime presented is the assassination of a public hero who had been on the limelight of planning a revolt that became successful in the Irish country. Fergus Kilpatrick was the hero but was murdered in a theater. The supposedly crime remained unsolved as the British police never found the killer. The twist in this crime comes when the full details of the occurrence are revealed. Among the conspirators of the revolt, there was a traitor. Kilpatrick who was the president charged Nolan with the task of finding out the traitor. The discovery indicated that Kilpatrick himself was the traitor and he was condemned to death. The heroic stature of Kilpatrick made the conspirator stage his death in a manner that would not tear down the country but rather would uphold his position as a hero and hasten the revolt. Therefore, the crime in this text is traitor but not the assassination of the hero.

The text does not set out clear lines of boundaries between the criminal, authority, and victim. In this case, the Kilpatrick turns out to the criminal who betrays the conspirators of the revolt. Kilpatrick happens to be the president of the conspirators. The conspirators are the victims as it is their secrets and plans that are revealed out. Once discovered, the conspirators condemn their president to death. The president signs his own death sentence but make request on how it should done. The conspirators then stages the death of the criminal. This portrays how the boundaries between criminal, authority, and the victim are blurred. 

The story in this text is being narrated by the great-grandson of Fergus Kilpatrick who was a traitor but died a heroic view. The narrator compared the heroic traitor to Moses who led the Israelites from Egypt to Promised Land but could not reach there. Being a relative of the criminal, the narrator tells the story in a manner that lessens the extent of the crime committed by Kilpatrick. 

In this story, the government institution mentioned is the police. The police were charged with the responsibility of investigating the killing of the President of conspirators at the theater. The analysis of historians on this scenario indicated that this failure did not damage their good reputation. It was suspected that the police had a hand in the assassination plot. 

The text portrays the effects of globalization through colonization as the action is set in an oppressed and tenacious country. This governance structure had led to the formation of a team of conspirators that planned a revolt to redeem their country.

The staging of the death sentence of Kilpatrick copied elements from famous stories of Julius Caesar and Macbeth from Shakespeare. In comparison to Julius Caesar, a note containing details of the alleged assassination was found in Kilpatrick’s pocket. The narrator observes that a lot of parallelism between the story of Julius Caesar and Fergus Kilpatrick to a point of thinking that they are one and the same person. Kilpatrick used his position as the president of the conspirators to commit the crime of being a traitor. Does the death penalty to Kilpatrick serve the purpose or does it glorify the traitorous criminal act committed by Kilpatrick?